Stephen,
If the unpublished fragment you quote dates from 1890, how can it bear witness to the effect on Peirce of an experience he had in 1892? Peirces account of that experience says that he was drawn into St. Thomass church, and up to the communion rail, almost without my own volition. He wrote about it to the rector of the church, offering his services in some form of church work. Then he says, I have never before been mystical; but now I am. But what does that mean, pragmaticistically? What church work did Peirce do as a result? As for his philosophical work, there is no evidence whatsoever that this mystical experience, or the memory of it, had anything to do with Peirce inventing pragmaticism as an alternative to pragmatism 12 years later. I think youre ignoring everything Peirce wrote about the natural light during the years in between (see my post addressed to Søren). That certainly does have a lot to do with pragmaticism. Brent on p.210 makes a totally specious connection between this incident and something Peirce wrote six years later, in which he says that No amount of speculation can take the place of experience. But that passage is much more genuinely connected to Peirces remark in his 1903 Harvard lectures that experience is our only teacher. Peirce makes no mention in either place of mystical experience, and elsewhere he makes it clear that the mystical is just about the most inconsequential kind of experience, contributing almost nothing to the growth of concrete reasonableness, which he virtually equates with the evolution of God. gary f. From: Stephen C. Rose [mailto:stever...@gmail.com] Sent: 21-May-14 11:04 AM To: Gary Fuhrman Cc: Peirce List Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and religion: text 1 For starters this unpublished fragment noted in Brent (2nd ed) as CSP to PC [20 July 1890) (L 77) which reads in part:: "Since then God is using me ... should I not be content? ..." And then his explicit description of his experience in church which he describes in his own words as mystical on pp 209-10 of the same book. CSP's conclusion" "I have never before been mystical, but now I am." The practical effect was his effort to define pragmaticism as distinct from pragmatism and complete 70K or so mss pages, many following the experience of April 24, 1992. I would suggest the practical effect is manifest 100 years following his death. And that such testimony in itself should at least be accorded a place in scholarly awareness of his biography.
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